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A federal judge said Wednesday she plans to rule quickly next week on whether to halt executions Georgia The man who says he should be spared an agreement reached during the COVID-19 pandemic that set the terms for the state to resume executing condemned people.
Stacey Humphreys is scheduled to die by lethal injection next Wednesday, nearly two decades after a jury found her guilty of malicious murder in the deaths of 33-year-old Cindy Williams and 21-year-old Lori Brown. The women were shot in 2003 in the real estate office where they worked atlanta Suburbia.
U.S. District Court Judge Leigh Martin May told lawyers after hearing arguments in Atlanta that she would rule by Thursday morning on whether Humphries’ execution goes forward.
Nathan Potek, an attorney for Humphries, 52, told the judge that sentencing Humphries to death now would violate his constitutional rights to due process and equal protection.
Potek said that’s because agreements made when executions were halted during the pandemic are still being used to delay executions for some inmates, but not Humphreys and others.
“Even though Mr. Humphries is currently on death row, he still retains his fundamental right to life,” Potek said.
Pandemic agreement keeps some executions on hold years later
After Georgia paused executions during the pandemic, the state Attorney General’s Office reached an agreement with lawyers for people on death row to set out the conditions under which they can resume. State Supreme Court has confirmed that the agreement is a binding contract.
The text of the agreement says it applies only to people on death row whose requests to have their appeals reheard were rejected by the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals while the pandemic-related judicial emergency was in place.
The judicial emergency was lifted in June 2021 and the appeals court rejected Humphreys’ request in October 2024. lawyers The state argues that, therefore, Humphreys is not covered by the agreement and his execution should be allowed to proceed.
Georgia Assistant Attorney General Sabrina Graham said, “Ultimately, we have not violated any constitutional due process that they are entitled to.”
The agreement includes three conditions that must be met before executions can be scheduled for covered inmates: the end of the state’s COVID-19 judicial emergency, the resumption of normal visitation in state prisons and the availability of a COVID-19 vaccine “to all members of the public.”
Additionally, state lawyers agreed that once those conditions were met, they would give three months’ notice before issuing an execution warrant for one of the prisoners covered under the agreement and six months’ notice for the rest.
Although the judicial emergency was lifted more than four years ago, defense lawyers say the other two conditions have not been met because visitation is “severely restricted” compared to pre-pandemic levels and infants younger than 6 months are not eligible for the vaccine.
A judge ruled earlier this year that the vaccine conditions had not yet been met, and the state’s appeal of that ruling is pending before the Georgia Supreme Court. The judge plans to handle the visitation issue separately.
Defense lawyers say COVID deal created 2 classes of people on death row
Humphries’ lawyers wrote in a lawsuit filed in October that the apparent purpose of the agreement was to allow attorneys for people on death row to adequately prepare for clemency proceedings and prepare for “the frantic time period leading up to immediate execution proceedings.”
They argue that attempting to execute people not included while the agreement is in effect creates “a separate, disenfranchised class” of death row inmates who will not be guaranteed the same level of legal representation.
State lawyers said Humphreys has failed to show how his lawyers have been restricted from preparing for his upcoming execution due to COVID-19 or that the state arbitrarily chose to opt him out of the deal.
State lawyers also point out that death row inmate Willie James Pye made similar arguments before his execution in March 2024 and that a federal judge found that “the state clearly has a legitimate basis to draw a line between prisoners covered and not covered under the agreement.” A similar case brought by three other people on Georgia’s death row was dismissed by a federal judge and is pending before the 11th Circuit.